This week is Homecoming Week at school. Homecoming festivities include a dress-up day “theme” for each day of the week.  This, as well as Halloween on the way, inspired me to drag out my overflowing costume box and share with blog readers some of the costumes I’ve put together over the years from thrift store purchases.  Today’s costume: 80s workout.

What you need:

• Leggings/tights/stretch pants in a bright color
• Leg warmers OR an old sweater you can cut the arms off of
• Leotard
• Headband OR ribbon

Here are the items I found at the local Goodwill, all for about

And here’s the completed ensemble, with items added from my own wardrobe (can’t believe I’m posting this online….):

You can see I’m wearing the sweater with hacked-off sleeves under the leotard.  Easy-peasy and fun!

We’ve all had those restless nights – the ones where you toss and turn and look at the clock every five minutes, knowing that the moment when your alarm rings is ticking closer and closer, yet for whatever reason, sleep eludes you.  I can’t promise that you’ll never have another sleepless night, but I can let you in on my secret to a good night’s sleep: the sleep pillow.

I first discovered sleep pillows as a little girl. A visit to a local herb farm’s gift store led me to a plush rabbit stuffed with relaxing, calming herbs like chamomile and lavender. When you snuggled the bunny at night, you released the herbs’ aroma, breathed it in, and drifted off into a peaceful sleep.  This sleep bunny, which I named Meadow, became one of my favorite childhood toys, and I slept with it every night (sort of like my personal Velveteen Rabbit). Years later, I still have my sleep bunny, but most of the herbal scents have worn off. The herb farm has changed hands and no longer sells sleep bunnies, so wanting a new herb-filled sleep pillow meant I’d have to make one on my own.

The problem was, I wasn’t sure of the exact ingredients to use to create a new sleep pillow – that is, until my mom stumbled across a neat little book called Making Herbal Dream Pillows: Secret Blends for Pleasant Dreams. This small, beautifully illustrated book contains a number of different recipes for your very own sleep pillows, and each recipe is classified according to the type of dream it might produce – stress-reducing dreams, creative dreams, romantic dreams. There is even a recipe for sensual dream pillows (got me thinking about making a Playboy bunny stuffed with sensual dreams mix…teehee!).

 

Based on the scent of my original sleep bunny, we selected a recipe that seemed closest and tweaked it slightly.  The book is super-helpful in that it lists and describes various dried herbs you can use in your dream pillows as well as their herbal properties, and it also has a list of herbs not to use.  This way, you can make your own mix if you’re feeling creative.  All herbs should be dried before adding them to a dream pillow.  Here’s the recipe we chose:

4 parts lavender

2 parts rose petals

2 parts hops

1 part chamomile

1 part lemon balm

We didn’t have dried lemon balm, so we substituted dried mint instead.  We had to decide how much “one part” was and settled on a 1/4. So, our mixture had 4 parts lavender (or 1 cup), 1/2 cup rose petals, and so on. This made plenty for two sleep bunnies.

Sourcing some of these ingredients can be challenging. Some are commonly grown – in my neck of the woods, lavender is easy to come by. So are rose petals. If you are picking fresh ingredients, leave some time to dry them – the best way to do this is gather the herbs into a bunch, band them together with a rubber band, and hang them upside down until they are dry. You can also use a food dehydrator to dry herbs (but that’s a post for a different day).  Other ingredients, like hops or lemon balm, are harder to find.  We found hops at a local beer brewing supply store. You can also try the bulk foods section of your grocery store, which usually has a selection of dried herbs and spices. If you’re lucky enough to have a tea shop in your area, you may try there, too, because many shops let you use their ingredients to mix your own teas – or buy individual ingredients in bulk.

Since we decided to make stuffed animals instead of pillows, we needed a bunny pattern. We used a pattern from Carol’s Zoo, a company which aims to teach children how to sew using simple patterns with only 2 or 3 pieces. 

We constructed the bunnies according to the pattern. We stuffed them with regular stuffing except for the stomachs. Here, we sewed two square scraps of fabric together to make a square, filled each square with the herb mixture, and stuffed this mini-pillow inside the rabbits.

We were very pleased with the final results. The herb mixture really smells wonderful, and the bunnies are nice and cuddly. Give it a try!

 

During the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, Americans generate 25 percent more waste, or 1 million extra tons of trash each year, according to the EPA. Whoa. So what to do with all that extra trash?

Every year, I get lots of emails asking whether certain holiday items are recyclable: gift wrap, tags, ribbons, boxes, bags. To help you make sure you’re keeping your trash to a bare minimum, here’s my guide to cleaning up the Christmas season.

If you’re anything like my family, you’ll end up with a pile of packaging discards after the presents have been opened. The easiest thing to do is shove all this packaging into a garbage can, haul it to the curb, and forget about it. Many Americans do exactly that, which is why landfills are swollen with extra junk this time of year.

Instead, do what I do. Wait until things have died down a bit after the holiday festivities are over. Go retrieve that bin of wrapping discards, plop yourself in front of a good football game or cooking show, start sorting into the following piles:

• Wrapping paper: This is almost always recyclable.  Submit it to the “tear” test – can you tear it easily, like newspaper? If so, it’s recyclable with your normal paper. Wrapping paper made from foil or plastic cannot be recycled. It’s okay to leave little pieces of tape and the adhesive labels to the paper when recycling.  (Note: If the wrapping paper is particularly nice and still in good condition, nothing says you can’t save it, iron it on very low heat, and reuse it next year).
• Ribbon and bows: Ribbon is not recyclable. Reuse it if you can – I have a bag filled with ribbons from gifts I’ve received, so I never have to buy new ribbon.
• Tissue paper:This stuff is really too thin to be recycled, but it’s definitely compostable. Or, reuse it!  It’s meant to looked crinkled anyway.
• Gift bags: Reuse these. We have some bags that have been passed around from family to family dozens of times.  They’re sturdy, durable, and very pretty.
• Raffia: Raffia is that stuff that looks like grassy ribbon – it’s brown, frays easily, and looks very natural. Raffia is a plant-product, so it can’t be recycled. Instead, compost it.
• Cardboard and boxes: Reuse all those boxes if you can. Otherwise, break them down and recycle them.
• Packaging peanuts: Click on the link to find a local mailing/shipping facility near you that accepts Styrofoam peanuts for recycling.  Or, keep these somewhere in a closet and reuse when you need to ship something fragile – but be sure to ask the recipient to recycle, too; packing peanuts are nasty on the environment.
• Plastic film: Stretchy plastic film can be recycled in your local grocery store plastic bag recycling receptacle.  Use the finger test to be sure – slowly stretch your finger through a piece of plastic film.  If it stretches with your finger, it’s recyclable. If it stays put or breaks, throw it out.
• Blister pouches and plastic clamshells:Look for for the plastic number coding symbol on plastic clamshells. Often, these are recyclable, but it depends on facilities in your area. If you find something marked # 3 plastic, this is garbage because the # 3 is code for PVC – this stuff is so nasty, it’s actually better to throw it away than melt it down for recycling, which releases toxic chemicals into the air.
• Gift tags: If gift tags have sticky backs and they’ve come loose from their wrapping paper, they are garbage.  Otherwise, recycle any paper gift tags with paper recycling. The only paper gift tags that aren’t recyclable are the ones that come bedazzled in glitter, sequins, ribbon, pom-poms, etc. – these get thrown away.

Two other holiday items should be recycled.  Don’t forget about:

• Christmas cards: When you are finished with your beautiful holiday cards, consider sending them to St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. The organization accepts card donations, removes the front, and attaches the front to a new back. Donors can buy these recycled holiday cards and support the organization at the same time.
• Christmas trees and greenery: If you have a cut Christmas tree or other festive greenery in your house, don’t send it to the landfill. Take advantage of a local curbside recycling program. If you don’t have access to one, cut the tree into smaller parts and slowly compost it.

Now, it’s time to start thinking about those green New Year’s resolutions.  Stay tuned!